


Fortunati

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-25
Updated: 2008-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:06:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Fortunati

"You're lucky I didn't shoot you." Maggie shoves her sidearm back in its holster, wondering why exactly the Gods hate her this much. She's never been especially devout, but she was never especially blasphemous either, and there must be at least a few people somewhere in the Fleet more deserving of her shit-ass luck. "What are you doing here?"

Captain Adama blinks at her, swaying a little on his feet. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"I'm guarding my bird." She leans back against the side of the Raptor, shifting her weight back and forth in an effort to scratch the itch hovering between her shoulder blades.

"Why?" He actually sounds curious, and...cheerful, which is weird, coming from him. Captain Adama is never cheerful. Captain Adama is an epic downer, with a nice ass and funny hair that sticks up in the front.

Gods. She's more tired than she thought. "Because I don't trust these people not to blow it up."

"We're on Cloud Nine, Racetrack. Safe as houses."

"I've never understood that expression." She rubs between her eyes, pressing her thumb hard against the dull line of pain there. She's hardly slept in days. Stim headaches are nasty, but they're better than the alternative of a hysterical meltdown in the cockpit. She has a two-day off coming up, just one more shift away. She'll get some sleeping pills from Cottle and knock herself out for the whole time. And around and around it goes, a chemical dance in her bloodstream and a time bomb in her head. "Who says you're safe at home?"

"Pretty much everybody, actually." He laughs to himself, shaking his head, and settles beside her, leaning back against the bird and blinking at her. "But what do they know, right?"

"Not much, from what I've seen." She sighs and looks around the hangar. No other Raptors, no Vipers. She knew that already, but she'd passed the point of too damn tired to trust her own eyes quite a ways back. "I take it you're on rec leave?"

"Got a two-shift pass." He takes a long swallow from a flask that must have been in his pocket; surely she would've noticed it in his hand. Or maybe she's cracking up. Equal chances. "Want a drink?"

"I'm on-duty, sir."

"I won't tell." He blinks at her with such exaggerated, little-boy sincerity that she has to laugh despite the pounding in her head.

"You sound like my little brother."

"Oh, don't say that." He shakes his head and wrinkles his nose, making a face that makes her laugh even harder. "No guy ever wants to hear that he reminds the hot girl of her brother."

"Hot girl, huh?" She raises an eyebrow at him, absently reaching up to loosen the collar of her flight suit. This should be an alarm bell, should be sending her back to regs and rules for safety, but frak it. It's too hard to care about that stuff right now, and he obviously doesn't, so why should she bother? "You must have had a couple of those flasks, sir."

"You think guys have to be drunk to think you're hot, Racetrack?"

"No, I think _you_ have to be drunk to _say_ it, given that you outrank me and you're the CAG, and..." She gestures vaguely, running out of steam halfway through. "So on."

He snorts and takes another drink. "What are you going to do, tell my dad?"

"I was thinking Starbuck, actually."

He chokes on his swallow and closes his eyes tight. "Gods, anything but that."

So it's an off day, then. Hard to keep track when the on-again off-again moved as fast as it did with those two. "Our little secret, sir."

"Thanks." He shoves the flask back in his pocket and stretches slowly. She can hear the snap and pop of his joints and his spine, the souvenir of too many hours in the cockpit. "So what are you waiting for?"

"Skulls is tracking down the Virgon representative to the Quorum." She shifts her stance, trying to find a more comfortable angle to lean back against the Raptor. There isn't one, and watching him stretch seems to have made every inch of her body eager to tell her just exactly how much tension and ache she had stored there. "Some message from the President. Urgent enough to put us on courier duty. Lucky us."

"Well, you're on the short list," he says, as if that not only means something, but makes all the sense in the world.

"The what?"

"The trustworthy short list. Pilots who can keep their mouths shut and aren't total frakups. I wrote it up for the President and my father a while ago, so they'd know who to use for sensitive stuff." He shrugs and smiles, a lopsided grin that looks good on him. Gods, he's as drunk as a priestess at Bacchanalia. "You're on it."

"Who _isn't_ on it?" she asks.

He giggles--it's the only word for the sound, even if it doesn't fit the image of the CAG. Neither does he, right now, but she's already promised not to tell. "Starbuck. Helo. Blowout."

"Oh, what's wrong with Blowout?"

"He's a little too stupid to take direction well." He thumps his head back against the bird and lets the end of his laughter trail off into a sigh. "Gods."

"Head spinning a little, sir?"

He smiles, closing his eyes. "Just a little. It's nice." He turns his head toward her, eyes still closed tight. "Come have a drink with me."

"I'm on-duty."

"I can declare you off-duty. I have that power." He opens his eyes, looking at her with utter, complete seriousness, like he's about to tell a major secret. "I'm the CAG."

She bites back a laugh, even though, Gods, that's hard. She's pretty sure this would be funny even if she wasn't so frakking tired. "What about Skulls?"

"Frak him."

"Many times."

He laughs again, smacking his palm flat against the side of the bird. "Leave him a note."

"What, taped to the...the dashboard? Like I'm borrowing his keys?"

He doesn't even blink. She's starting to think good old Captain Apollo's lost his mind. But then, who hasn't, around here? "Yeah."

"That's not quite procedure, sir."

"Gods, please stop calling me that." He leans closer to her, staring at her with those frakking blue eyes, the ones they all swooned over for exactly as long as it took for him to open his mouth and start talking. "Come have a drink with me."

She looks at him for a long moment, his eyes, the slight boozy flush under his skin. "How about a compromise?"

He rolls his eyes and his lip slips into what she's just about ready to call a pout. "I'm listening."

The Virgon rep can talk a blue streak on any topic under the Gods. They should have at least half an hour of privacy before Skulls gets back. That might be cutting things a little close, if this is going where Maggie thinks it's going, but on the one hand she could be wrong, and on the other it's not like it would be anything her ECO hasn't seen before. "We can split the rest of your flask, right here in the Raptor."

"Sneaky. I like it." He straightens up and gestures at the door, swaying a little. "After you."  
**  
It turns out that Apollo is extra flexible when he's drunk. That's good, because the inside of the Raptor really wasn't designed for this sort of thing.

By the time she's out of her flight suit, they're both laughing, flush-faced and pressed together in the cramped space between the jump seats. The liquor from his flask--sour and cheap and reminding her of home--is warm on her lips and her tongue, from the two swallows she got before he was all over her and from kissing him, chasing the taste of it from his mouth.

"Racetrack," he mumbles against her neck, grazing his teeth against the skin. It makes her squirm and laugh harder, which makes him start laughing again, and she gives up on trying to find anything resembling a creative solution to the problem of space and relaxes into lying flat on her back on the floor.

He braces himself over her, which does nice things to his arms, and blinks at her, his face half-hidden in the dim light. "Your eyes look strange."

"I haven't slept in days." She can't tell the CAG that. But right now he doesn't seem to be the CAG, and it's worth the gamble, it's got to be. "I'm going frakking crazy."

"I know the feeling." He lowers himself and kisses her again, his tongue teasing against her lips while one of his hands finds the hem of her tank top and pushes it up, his palm warm against her torso.

She closes her eyes and lifting her hips off the floor so she can shove her shorts down. "It's all so frakked up."

"It is." He kisses between her breasts, his breath warm against the damp fabric of her bra, then just a bit lower, working his way down. "Gotta laugh or you'll cry."

"Gods' frakking truth." She closes her eyes as his teeth graze her skin just above her navel. "And we're the _lucky_ ones."

He laughs hot against her and glances up to meet her eyes. "Frakked up kind of luck."

"Yeah." She vaguely thinks she should say something more, but he's catching the band of her underwear with his teeth to tug it down, and that's _ridiculous_ , so she starts laughing instead. She's lying there on the cold floor of her Raptor with the CAG between her legs, and he's laughing too, probably at himself and at her and at the universe, because it's all really frakking funny.

"Just...come on," she finally gasps through the last fit of laughter, raising her hips again and pushing the worn-out briefs down herself. "The lucky ones. Gods help us before we choke to death on luck."

"So say we all." He presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh, teasing sensitive skin with his tongue, and she closes her eyes and tries to let herself fall away, counting on the chance that she'll land on her feet.  



End file.
